The revised mayoral control bill supported by the State Senate fails to ensure true parental input in public schools, parents claim.
“It’s useless,” said Christopher Spinelli, president of School District 22’s Community Education Council (CEC). “I don’t understand what all of the dramatics were from the State Senate because I don’t see this as a compromise. This is a lightly tweaked version of mayoral control.”
After weeks of squabbling, the Senate reached a deal with Mayor Michael Bloomberg on a school governance law that intended to empower parents and educators but would keep power in Bloomberg’s hands.
The changes, which would also need approval from the state Assembly, would allow community superintendents to have more oversight of local schools. Also, parent training centers would be created.
“While it’s not nearly adequate enough, I think that holding out and getting that parent training piece was an important accomplishment by the State Senate,” said Jim Devor, president of District 15’s CEC.
Spinelli said the modest revamping would do little to ensure that Bloomberg and schools Chancellor Joel Klein truly consider parents’ opinions.
“I don’t see any of those things making any change to how the mayor and chancellor are going to go ahead and control the schools,” Spinelli said. “It doesn’t look from where I’m standing that parents are going to have any more input under this new legislation.”
Laurie Windsor, president of District 20’s CEC, was glad to see superintendents regain some authority.
“It’s important to have a community superintendent so principals and administrators have someone they can go to when they have issues and problems,” she said.
As for the new training centers, that’s a toss-up, Windsor said.
Currently, “For school leadership teams, we heard a lot of complaints that the instructor just read from the manual. A lot of people were upset,” Windsor said. But, “You could have a new training set up and who knows how great that’s going to be.”
Before the deal between the Senate and Bloomberg was reached, Canarsie State Senator and Democratic Majority Leader John Sampson told this paper that he would only support a mayoral control bill offering more input for parents.
“Statistics support what we have been talking about all this time – greater parental involvement increases a child academic ability,” he said. “The current bill does not have these checks and balances.”
“When a child leaves school at the end of the day, who’s responsible for them? Their parents,” Sampson explained. “What’s wrong with greater parental involvement during school as well?”
There is no word on when the Senate will vote on a mayoral control bill. The Assembly, which already approved mayoral control legislation, has not said whether it would support the new changes agreed upon by the Senate and Bloomberg.
—with Tom Tracy
